Enough is enough.
The Melbourne Storm have proved yet again that the club has learned nothing and regrets nothing after being stripped of the 2007 and 2009 premierships for breaching the salary cap in the NRL’s biggest cheating scandal.
The immense penalties they got hit with for dragging the league through the mud obviously weren’t enough to make them realise the awfulness of what they did.
It’s time to punish them again.
To recap: Storm officials confessed to systematically rorting the cap from 2006 to 2010.
The team spent $3.17million more than they were allowed to in that time, according to an independent audit.
Pictured: Storm players line up just before the start of the club’s match against Brisbane last Thursday night. Just metres away you’ll find a sight that should infuriate all footy fans
In the bowels of Melbourne’s home ground you’ll find their trophy room – complete with the silverware from the premierships the team cheated to win in 2007 and 2009
Then-skipper Cameron Smith holds up the trophy after the 2007 grand final, which came during a period in which Melbourne broke the rules to the tune of $3.17million
Melbourne pulled off the crime against sportsmanship by developing a complex system of cheating using fake contracts and invoices. Secret, incriminating letters were stored in files at the home of then-CEO Brian Waldron.
The findings of the NRL’s investigation were black and white. There was no wiggle room, not even a slight shade of doubt, when the Storm also had their 2006, 2007, and 2008 minor premierships ripped away from them by the league in April 2010.
But last Thursday night, footy fans once again saw indisputable proof that the most successful team of the modern era is having a laugh at footy fans’ expense.
Instead of taking the punishment on the chin, the Storm are still proudly displaying the 2007 and 2009 grand final trophies at their home ground, AAMI Park.
The proof is in a photo of the club’s trophy room that was posted to X by Ross Symons, the CEO of Big Ant Studios, which created the new Rugby League 26 video game.
There’s not even an asterisk next to the year to indicate that the titles were stripped.
So according to the Storm, those trophies are worth every bit as much as the ones the team earned without cheating.
Symons’ photo shows the silverware tucked away in the bowels of the stadium – but Melbourne have also shown their complete lack of contrition very publicly.
Pictured: The graphic the Storm created to mark Craig Bellamy’s 500th game as coach in March 2022, with the ’07 and ’09 premierships listed without so much as an asterisk
According to Melbourne, they have every right to pay homage to the 2007 (pictured) and 2009 grand final wins – and anyone who says different doesn’t know what they’re talking about
In 2019, former Storm skipper Cameron Smith said the 2007 and 2009 titles should be reinstated.
In March 2022, the Storm celebrated Craig Bellamy’s 500th game as coach by creating social media posts for X, Facebook and Instagram that stated the team won titles under him in 2007, 2009, 2012, 2017 and 2020.
There were no asterisks on the graphic for 2007 and 2009 that time, either.
And in July 2023, Melbourne created another graphic to advertise the festivities to commemorate the 25th anniversary of their entry into the NRL.
Guess what? There, alongside the four legitimate premiership wins, were 2007 and 2009 yet again.
Fans are justifiably furious every time this disgraceful behaviour crops up.
‘You’re celebrating cheating? What kind of example are you setting? You didn’t win a premiership in ’09 or ’07,’ one Twitter user wrote in reply to the Storm’s post in 2023.
‘Two of those premierships don’t belong to you. They were stripped. You don’t have them,’ another wrote.
But to the Storm, the outrage is water off a duck’s back because it comes from people who don’t know what they’re talking about.
The club and former stars who played in those two besmirched grand finals keep trotting out the same line to explain why it’s fine to celebrate the titles they cheated their way to.
They think everybody should just shut up about it.
‘The club acknowledges the teams from those two years,’ Storm CEO Justin Rodski said in July 2023 when the furore over the 25th anniversary celebration was fresh.
‘They were the winners of the grand final on those days. It was appropriate to acknowledge those teams and the players who fought so hard to achieve a grand final victory.
‘What happened retrospectively had nothing to do with the players.
‘We think it appropriate to celebrate the seasons that they had. It’s part of our history that on those days in 2007 and 2009 our teams won the grand final.’
Storm CEO Justin Rodski has justified the club’s repeated honouring of the stripped grand final wins by claiming it’s ‘appropriate to celebrate the seasons they had’
Club legend Cameron Smith (pictured being chaired off the ground) said non-Storm fans ‘don’t understand’ the way he and his teammates feel about the salary cap scandal
Cameron Smith echoed that line about paying homage to the players’ efforts when he said, ‘I don’t think those people understand the way that the Storm people in that period feel about it at all.’
What a pile of garbage.
All any fan needs to understand are the cold, hard facts that the club cheated in order to win premierships.
It doesn’t matter how hard the players fought ‘to achieve a grand final victory’ because the team sought to achieve that victory by blatantly and repeatedly breaking the rules.
Are Manly and Parramatta fans just supposed to agree it’s ‘appropriate’ to celebrate the fact their sides lost to Storm teams that were illegally overloaded with talent?
And now the team has – once again – rubbed everybody’s noses in it by refusing to fully own up to what happened by removing all trace of their grand final ‘glories’.
The arrogance is sickening. Fans have had it up to the eyeballs.
When Smith was added to the NRL’s Hall of Fame in August last year, footy supporters lashed out at his inclusion on the basis of the salary cap scandal and his defiant celebration of the dirty premierships.
The Storm have made it abundantly clear that they will not stop honouring those titles of their own accord. They see no reason why they should stop making a mockery of their punishment.
So punish them again. Make them stop celebrating.
Don’t take points off them, because this crop of players doesn’t deserve to suffer for the sins of the past and the top brass’s naked campaign to rewrite history.
But fine them. Publicly shame them. Turn the NRL’s official spotlight on what they’re doing and blast it for the conceited exercise that it is.
We often hear about players and fans bringing the game into disrepute with their actions.
Surely this is a clear-cut case of a club doing just that by thumbing its nose at the league and acting like the rules don’t apply to them.
